I would strongly support this but …
I can see a huge dioxycarbophobic propaganda push in the offing rather than the facts of climate and there’s way too much of that already.
One day after new test results showed that only 32 percent of U.S. 8th graders are proficient in science, a group of 26 states has helped draft a document that may bring about a major overhaul of science education in this country. Known as the Next Generation Science Standards, the draft sets ambitious new expectations for what students should learn in each grade from kindergarten through high school, specifying that evolution and an understanding of how human activity impacts the climate are essential components of scientific literacy. Starting in 2013, states will have the option of adopting these standards and bringing their school curricula in line with them.
The standards are based on recommendations from the National Research Council of the National Academies and address many perceived shortcomings in science education. “Currently, K-12 science education in the United States…is not organized systematically across multiple years of school, emphasizes discrete facts with a focus on breadth over depth, and does not provide students with engaging opportunities to experience how science is actually done,” wrote the authors of the NRC framework. The standards also put new emphasis on engineering, an area that U.S. teenagers, judging by recent studies, know little about. They also stress process as much as content, explaining how scientists build on and revise their knowledge based on evidence, how they ask questions and define problems, how they develop and use models, and plan and carry out investigations. For example, the standards call for kindergarteners to “use observations to describe how plants and animals depend on the air, land, and water where they live to meet their needs.” Middle schoolers would develop models to represent the “cycling from carbon in the atmosphere to carbon in living things.”
The recommendations also explicitly include the teaching of climate change, evolution, natural selection and the history of Earth. Middle schoolers would “obtain and evaluate information about how two populations of the same species in different environments have evolved to become separate species.” They would also “use system models and representations to explain how human activities significantly impact: (1) the geosphere, (2) the hydrosphere, (3) the atmosphere, (4) the biosphere, and (5) global temperatures.”
If they include logic & numerical analysis, the kid’s BS detector might go off like it did for Bjørn Lomborg which led him to write The Skeptical Environmentalist.
Thanks
JK
If 32 percent of U.S. 8th graders are proficient in science, why don’t we have a similar percentage of journalists proficient in science? Either there’s a counting error, or something worse is going on.
Assuming they teach scientific process, the entire “climate science” schtick will fail when it’s presented. The problem is that most teachers in K-12 are scientifically illiterate themselves. How do you teach “Science, when you haven’t a clue what “Science” actually is?
From: Changing the Cultural Climate … on Climate Culture
Scott Denning, Ph.D. May 14, 2012
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/05/changing-the-cultural-climate-on-climate-change/#comment-81753
Having spoken at two Heartland Institute International Climate Change Conferences, in 2010 and again in 2011, I’ve often felt that I stumbled into a classic Monty Python comedy sketch from my youth.
In the sketch memorialized on YouTube, Michael Palin pays to have a five-minute argument with John Cleese. Despite his protests, all he gets for his money is rapid-fire contradction. Visibly agitated, he complains that he is dissatisfied.
PALIN: An argument’s not the same as contradiction. An argument is a collected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.
CLEESE: No it isn’t.
PALIN: Yes it is! Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just an automatic gainsaying of anything the other person said.
CLEESE: No it isn’t.
Like Cleese, many climate “contrarians” have no overall argument. Rather, they offer a series of inconsistent contradictions to specific statements, projecting an overall sense of umbrage instead of a reasoned critique. They claim that the observations are junk, and in the next breath that the observations disprove the models. They claim that temperatures aren’t rising, then that warming is caused by the Sun, or that the non-existent warming is good for us. They remind us that arguments from authority are unscientific, then ask us to respect the authority of retired NASA managers.
Indeed you can often encounter pointless reactive arguments and not just on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (a.k.a. enhanced greenhouse effect).
Perhaps you would care to engage on a specific point – climate sensitivity.
This is something I have laid out many times with embedded reference links, recently here. From the IPCC WG1 and Trenberth et al clearly real world feedback (GHE) from 2xCO2 can be expected to deliver net surface warming of 0.37°C.
Can you give a realistic reason why this fundamental point is inflated to a mean value of 3.0°C in a diverse range of values in IPCC documentation?
Why do GCCMs use λ values 5-10 times greater than Trenberth’s clearly derived 33°C/(330W/m2) = 0.1?
“Forcings” are, indeed, bewildering in complexity. And one has to include the effects of aerosols and other gasses other than CO2. I have no training in climate science, like the great majority of people. I would love an explanation to your quandary by Skeptical Science or James Hansen who estimated forcing of 1 W/sq. M.
However, isn’t it true that the CO2 has increased by 30% or so, the global average temp by 1 deg. C, no other factors at this time of our geologic history push things enough in that direction, and we have reaped the whirlwind, already, in many places. Wouldn’t it be wise to err on the side of caution, until you all sort this out, and get the hell off coal? Or can you explain the warming in another way?
JFreed, You seem to be both willfully ignorant of the entire point of the discussion, and subject to the absurdity of the “Precautionary Principle”. Let’s make this really simple. CO2 FOLLOWS temperature rise, geologically, by about 800 years. Since we’re about 250 years past the end of the Little Ice Age, we should expect to start seeing some small increase in CO2 levels. And we are. The Earth’s climate is clearly a negative feedback system, otherwise, in the past, when CO2 reached extremes between 1/2 and 10 times the current level, we’d have already “tipped” into catastrophe. Since it didn’t happen then, we may safely assume that even if CO2 reaches 2,200ppm, well beyond anything humanity can possibly do, we shouldn’t be subject to a “tipping”, although life might get otherwise interesting.
The “Precautionary Principle” is absurd on its face. It assumes there is no acceptable level of risk. In this case, all the evidence points to a temperature rise of even the possible extreme of 1 deg C being a net positive. Even that increase is vanishingly unlikely, as CO2 is the most minor possible driver of climate, and all scientific evidence points to a cooling for the foreseeable future.
jfreed27 that’s a nonsense statement
If you want current GHG forcings simply look them up at CDIAC.
We were talking about sensitivity – the λ (lambda) values used to estimate the result of changes in forcing (ΔF).
Climate models usually work on 0.5 – 1.0 °C per W/m2, which is how they come up with such fantastic warming projections. These numbers are apparently used based on this estimate by James Hansen:
Global climate forcing was about 6 1/2 W/m2 less than in the current interglacial period. This forcing maintained a planet 5 °C colder than today. (Can we defuse The Global Warming Time Bomb? naturalSCIENCE, August 1, 2003) — the text is slightly more specific: “This forcing maintains a global temperature difference of 5 °C, implying a climate sensitivity of 3/4 ± 1/4 °C per W/m2.” The Scientific American version, March 2004, is also available here as 310Kb .pdf*.
HUMAN-MADE climate forcings, mainly greenhouse gases, heat the earth’s surface at a rate of about two watts per square meter—the equivalent of two tiny one-watt bulbs burning over every square meter of the planet. The full effect of the warming is slowed by the ocean, because it can absorb so much heat. The ocean’s surface begins to warm, but before it can heat up much, the surface water is mixed down and replaced by colder water from below. Scientists now think it takes about a century for the ocean to approach its new temperature.
The implication is clear — according to Hansen Earth should have warmed 1 – 2 °C under the influence of an added 2 W/m2 from anthropogenic sources, it’s just hiding in the ocean.
According to Trenberth’s figures though there is no missing heat at all.
Now, to address your specific points:
A trivial level of an essential trace gas (CO2) has increased from a critically low level to one slightly less critical (thank God for that) – photosynthesis fails at levels below 180ppmv and evolved at levels greater than 2,000ppmv. Levels greater than 1,000ppmv would be greatly advantageous to aerobic life on earth.
Earth is estimated to have warmed 0.7°C relative to when it was cooler and that is distinctly preferable to it having cooled (definitely not good for life on earth). I have no problem with that. As far as “reaping the whirlwind” goes you have fallen for some media hype – we have no evidence extreme weather events have done anything but declined since the middle of the 20th century (see, e.g., Ryan Maue’s global accumulated cyclone energy statistics).
Erring on the side of caution is to not radically transform our energy supply at enormous cost with associated loss of reliability. And no, getting off coal, our most abundant and useful energy source is a really bad idea, especially when so many more people need provision of affordable reliable energy supplies.
Finally, of course warming can be explained but why does it need to be? Earth’s mean temperature varies almost 4°C throughout the year (it’s coolest in January and warmest in July – see the National Climatic Data Center). Of what relevance is a guesstimated +0.4°C in a “globally averaged mean” to people who experience local seasonal changes of 30°C through the year?
You seem very excited but it is not all clear you have any real reason to be.
If you take into account the externalities that go with coal (30,000 premature deaths/year and, yes, climate change, producing extreme weather, ocean acidification, etc.) it’s much cheaper to look for energy elsewhere. Wars for oil are pretty expensive as well. And, yes, you do have to be able to explain warming, notwithstanding your (intentional?) confusion of weather with climate.
Also, CO2 may lag warming but also reinforces it. In the absence of other factors, it alone produces it.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm
Now, there are no other current factors to cause warming., only CO2, which by virtue of its molecular structure and knowledge of its spectra is expected to absorb energy. So, please explain warming of 1 deg. C, or do you dispute that also?
Not made up. http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/cleanair.htm
jfreed27 how have you survived so long without being picked clean by scammers?
Sorry but there’s something missing in the 30,000 dead from coal-fired electricity case – the bodies.
I guess I should be warned by your choice of John Cook and a green shopping site as sources but, nevertheless:
You have missed the point of starting with climate sensitivity – all claims of enhanced greenhouse effect causing catastrophic warming are contingent upon that value and that value alone.
Until and unless you can show a sound physical basis for inflating that from the 0.1°C per Watt per meter squared demonstrated by empirical measure to the utterly absurd values used to trend-fit climate model output to real world values trace levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has no case to answer.
Stop arm-waving and start thinking.
“(30,000 premature deaths/year and, yes, climate change, producing extreme weather, ocean acidification, etc.)”
Completely made up.
An excellent antidote to “perceived shortcomings in science education” is a curriculum based on John Saxon’s mathematics courses combined with Apologia Ministries’ series in the natural sciences by Jeannie Fulbright and Jay Wile. It is systematic, incremental, and allows flexibility in course sequencing. Most importantly, unlike the NRC’s Next Generation Science Standards, the Saxon/Apologia curriculum is creation based, promotes a Biblical worldview, and provides a solid foundation for students to refute the fallacies of Darwinian evolution and the modern environmental movement.
My niece, who was homeschooled, used this curriculum throughout her primary and secondary education years. She earned the top score of ’5′ on four science, mathematics, and computing related Advanced Placement Examinations (Calculus BC, Physics B, Chemistry, and Computer Science AB) and completed her baccalaureate degree in Computer Software Engineering at Indiana Wesleyan University in 2.5 years.